No, I wasn't Flourescent. I could not possibly be. I touched and massaged my cheeks and they felt the same— mine. I was wrought with absolute awe while my kidnapper indulged me.
I may have been perpetually jealous of my sister but I had never thought once of deliberately replacing her, think less of unintentionally. Perhaps, every other person had completely underestimated how utterly 'undifferent' the both of us were. Now, this very moment, the truth was glaring at me in the face.
All it takes is a red wig, and I would be Flourescent Palmer.
Still, that is fact for another day. For today, I just had to wonder how I got a free wig in the first place. For although my hair was still straight and shoulder length, it was now the dark red of Flourescent's shade. My blue eyes had flecks of amber hue in them. Did I get contacts too?
"What the hell is going on?" I blubbered.
"Alright, that's enough." My kidnapper's mirror disappeared in a flash just like how it had appeared. I was dazed. Lost on how next to react. While he resumed shoving me, my compunction was to scream on the sheer wrongness of it all. Him? Me? Maude? Freur? Even Flourescent would be baffled about how plottwisting my life was turning out to be.
"So, are you ever going to tell me your name?"
"My name, is Christopher Maultner."
Christopher Maultner? I was tempted to draw myself into a halt once again but I successfully resisted the urge.
"Christopher Maultner?" I settled for blustering instead. "As in 'Maultner' Maultner?"
He did not respond but I could sense the grimness of his silence. Need he say more? Yes, as in 'Maultner' Maultner. If my recollection of the Sanctuary's history was accurate, Charles Maultner led a faction of rogues that broke away from both the Sanctuary and Shiner Packs. They were set to establish their own pack called the Maultnereans against the wishes of the Alpha's Council. But all of a sudden, every single one of them just disappeared — never to be heard from again.
Until now?
How does one stumble upon the fortune of Alpha Freur Ferdinand as mate and meeting the last of the Maultnereans within a timeframe of a couple of hours?
"You are the last of the Maultnereans!" I shouted.
"You are flabbergasted, hmm? You and your pack never thought to hear from us again. But somebody has to pay for their crimes Flourescent. You can never run from that."
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
The Maultnereans broke away, fed up by the constant cold war between Shiner and Sanctuary. They had quite a backing. They were turning heads. The Alpha's Council feared that their unlawful secession would encourage other werewolves to be mutinous and break away from their respective packs even if it meant risking discovery from humans. A day to when the Alpha's Council could declare the waging of war on the Maultnereans, they all just disappeared. Endless and intense probes could not produce helpful information as to their whereabouts. Two years later, the Alpha's Council officially presumed them all to be dead and closed the damnable case that had been such a chip on their shoulders.
"You died!" The consequent shove upon my protestation was rougher. I stumbled and would have lost my footing and crushed my nose against the ground had he not caught me by my waist. "Well… clearly, you um… didn't die, dang it you know what I mean. You were all presumed dead by the Alpha's Council."
"That's what your pack wanted the council to believe," said he gruffly.
"Hold on a second, you think we have a hand in whatever 'THIS' is?"
"Maybe you are actually clueless Miss Palmer, but you are only nineteen. In two years, you'll become the pack's ultima and then you'll be privy to all of the Alpha's secrets."
"You think Freur has a hand in whatever 'THIS' is?" That sounded worse somehow. The Freur I knew could never be involved in any issue as shady as the Maultnereans. "How many more of you are out there?" I demanded.
"It's just me. But I'm enough."
The cave grew darker and damper the deeper we went. Stalactites dripped liquid on us. Suffice to say, I was totally grossed out. If I was Flourescent, I would have already died from disgust.
Maultner finally bid me stop when we approached a pulley system like wooden elevator (I dunno, I was never really good with naming scientific innovations). This thing did not look sturdy at all. I could not help staring at it with a frozen expression of mortification. I caught Maultner's smug smile from the corner of my eyes.
"Why do you look so shocked that I know you guys mode of moving up and down the waterfall? Isn't this how you got down?"
No, I fell like a crashing UFO or a pancake flipped over on a pan but somehow landing on the kitchen floor with a SPLAT instead.
Unfortunately, an explanation like the above would open an entirely new can of worms, considering no natural living thing that wasn't a plant was programmed to survive a fall from such heights with no injuries to boot. It was better to let him stay convinced that this was how I came down.
"This has not been used in years," I said. It was his beef on how he chose to interprete my statement.
"I use it every now and then," Maultner said. "You can't deceive me. Although I'm not sure it can carry more than one person at a time. Can it?" He sounded hopeful. He truly believed I knew about the elevator.
"No." I shook my head and gave him my best innocent smile. His brows knitted in suspicion.
"You are not trying to deceive me again, are you?"
"You don't want us both to crash through and plummet to certain death, do you?" I retorted.
His lips pressed in a thin line. He was seriously deliberating on my words. He slung his gun over his shoulders and his eyes roamed over me. "You are going up first. Try anything sneaky and I'll blow you up— Beta's daughter or not."
He pushed me into the shaft and began to crank on a manual pulley. The shaft slowly bumped upwards with just me in it.
"How long does this take?"
"Ten minutes," Maultner offhandedly replied. Ten minutes alone with myself. I figured I had to make the most use of the time.
"Ara!" I whisper yelled. "Ara, I swear to the moon goddess if you don't answer me right now, I am going to jump down and kill us both for real. You're not the only one who just had a death scare so answer me."
Sadly, I guess Ara knew the things I was capable of. Suicide out of spite just wasn't one of them. I blew hair out of my face as I tried to scheme how best I could get back at Ara for this.
"You're not really going to kill yourself, are you?" Asked a new voice in my head. A female, but she sounded nothing like Ara. Still, I perked up. Ara had lived in my head my whole life and I just was not ready to entertain the horrifying possibility that I would never hear her voice again nor the voice of any body/wolf.
"Who are you? You're not Ara." I was quick to accuse.
"If I tell you who I am, you have to promise you won't kill both of us."
"How did you get into my head?" I demanded. Every werewolf had a guaranteed inner wolf but that just had to be the height of our perceived insanity. Hearing another voice that wasn't your inner wolf was —as far as I knew— absolutely unheard of.
"My name is Gimmel. If you ask me how I'm in your head, then I suppose I should ask how I'm in your body."
I frowned. "Are you the reason my hair is red and my eyes have flickers of amber in them?"
"Well, yeah, I guess? I am a red wolf."
Flourescent was a red wolf. Red wolves were quite rare, so make that one additional token of popularity in Flourescent's favour. On the other hand, I had a 'same old same old' blonde wolf. As werewolves, our physical characteristics did not much differ from our inner wolves. If you had yellow hair and green eyes, then your inner wolf had to have yellow fur and green eyes as well. And if you had silver hair, your inner wolf had to have silver fur. Silver wolves were even rarer than red wolves.
"Well, I gotta fan my cheeks. This is quite a lot to take in."
"Your hands are tied behind your back," Gimmel stated the obvious.
"I don't understand. Why is Ara gone and you're here?"
"Maybe if you hadn't gone and gotten yourself killed…" Gimmel left her accusatory statement hanging.
"I really died?"
"I don't see how else I would be here. I think I've always been here Audie (can I call you Audie?). Since you were a child, I've watched your exploits. I've seen how close you are with Ara. It's me I'm more worried about. I was never really sure if I existed or if you and Ara weren't just something as conjured as I was. But with what's happening here now, I guess you, Ara, and I are real. Not that I'm complaining."
"If you're here, why isn't Ara here? Why can't the both of you exist in my mind together?"
"I guess it doesn't work that way. I guess Ara would be in the place where I was."
"Which was?"
"Oblivion. Floating in darkness. Lost in the Abyss of nothingness."
"Oh boy." I blew out a breath of dismay. "Ara wouldn't like that. That noisy wolf."
"Well, if it makes you feel better, she's not alone."
"What the hell do you mean she's not alone?"
"In the dark place, there were other wolves, floating with me. We never talked to each other, but I guess we all wondered the realness of our existence together."
"How many 'other wolves' are we talking?"
Gimmel released an audible shudder. "I couldn't possibly put a number to them."
"What do you mean by that?" I howled.
"We were pretty much. I never thought to count. I'm not good with counting sheep."
"Wolves Gimmel, wolves. Give me an estimate right now or this won't be ending well for both of us. How many of you guys are somehow floating in a darkness that resides in my mind?"
"Well," Gimmel coughed, "this is awkward."
"How many?"
"Give or take, and to be on the safe side…"
"Well?" I prodded.
Gimmel released a sigh of resignation. I could hear her wince in my head — as if the number somehow discombobulated her too.
"Five hundred."